by Mad_Cyric » Wed Aug 03, 2005 7:41 pm
I'd been watching AMVs for quite some time before my brother's constant talking about making one himself got me interested in what that required. I decided to try it out so I could create something awesome to show at NDK over here in Denver, and I made some test projects to start learning AE and Premiere. After troubling over the simplest things and eventually becoming somewhere close to profficient, I decided to rip a movie just to see how that process worked. By that time I was spending hours at night thinking of all the AMVs I could make and I could hardly stand myself not being able to do it yet. I fought through the process with AD and Ermac's guide, and even though it was hard to learn everything I found I actually enjoyed the technical aspect and learning how it worked. The DVD I ripped was Ghost in the Shell, so I decided to try just making one of the little scenes I had dreamed up while thinking of AMVs I could make in Premiere, just to see what it would be like. I titled the project "work" as in my saying in my head "please just work dammit!" I decided "well what the hell I'm just going to make this video.
Using this site (primarily the avtech guide) I learned how to make each of my visions a reality in my video, and how to make it a high quality production technically. I periodically sent parts of my video to my bro to see what he thought, and that process refined it as I went. About 4 months into my editing (I was teaching myself *everything* I could, from image masks to avisynth filters), the stress caused by the amount of work I was doing academically and other such things caused me to lose my drive about 2/3 of the way through the vid, and then about 2 months later I started up again to finish what I'd started no matter what it took. In the end I finished it, and it will be debuting over at NDK in September (although they don't mind if I put it online before that)! So in the end my video took the better part of a year for me to make, but I consider it well worth it. I think the result is really a good video, anyway, and I think it will win one of the 5 awards at NDK.
In any case I found that video editing is something creative that I really love to do, and I'm going to keep doing it as long as I can; I'm already making my next video. And that, is how I started making AMVs. My first video might've taken a lot longer than most, but it's also a lot better than a lot of first videos, and I hope people can get past the stigma and not pass judgement before they even see it.